Isn’t this wonderful? The illustration is just gorgeous, but is this the vintage swimwear in this Cole of California advert actually a swimsuit or a bikini? I’m not sure.
The text reads:
Streamline – beautiful new backsweep… in a Lastex swimsuit… from Cole’s “Westward to the Sea” beachwear collection.
So no clues there! The ad is taken from ‘The Californian’ magazine from February 1947, which seems a bit early for a bikini. Any ideas?
Source: Archive.org
Hi Mary, it could be a bikini since Cole seems to have produced other two-piece swimsuits in 1947 (or maybe this just another picture of the one in the ad) :
http://www.ebay.ie/itm/1947-Cole-Fashion-Womens-Swim-Wear-Bathing-Suits-Sexy-Pin-Up-California-Art-Ad-/400461981955?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5d3d64e903#ht_500wt_922
The first modern bikinis date from 1946 in France : “The modern bikini was introduced by French engineer Louis Réard and separately by fashion designer Jacques Heim in Paris in 1946. Réard was a car engineer but by 1946 he was running his mother’s lingerie boutique near Les Folies Bergère in Paris.[50] Heim was working on a new kind of beach costume. It comprised two pieces, the bottom large enough to cover its wearer’s navel. In May 1946, he advertised it as the world’s “smallest bathing suit”. Réard sliced the top off the bottoms and advertised it as “smaller than the smallest swimsuit”.[51][52] The idea struck him when he saw women rolling up their beachwear to get a better tan.[5]”
Ah it could be the same one couldn’t it? I head that Louis Reard’s bikini was advertised saying a two piece isn’t a true bikini unless it can pass through a wedding ring (which sounds pretty tiny to me!) This is a test for you then, when did bikini styles first start going below the navel…? 🙂
I forgot to cite Wikipedia.
i don’t see an image? Am I missing something?
Hi Daisy
Is it the image in my blog post, or in the link that Dirk posted that you can’t see?
Try this link, Daisy ; http://cgi.ebay.ie/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?VISuperSize&item=400461981955
According to this interesting “History of the Bikini” in Time Magazine, the first bikini ever worn (on July 11, 1946 at a Paris outdoor swimming-pool; a few days after it had been designed by Louis Reard on July 5) already went below the navel ! :
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1908353_1905441,00.html
Doh! I should have known that, I did a post about that bikini a while back. Apparently the print on the fabric was newsprint in anticipation of all the news coverage that Reard knew it would get. He couldn’t get a conventional model to model it because it was so tiny, so the girl modelling it was a Parisienne nude dancer. Oh, and it was a g-string too (see this pic: http://weheartvintage.co/2012/08/03/guest-post-the-bikini-for-the-red-list/ ), which I find pretty shocking for the time, no wonder the usual models were hesitant about it!
“The bikini is the most important thing since the atom bomb” « We Heart Vintage
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